Global brands spend hundreds of billion of dollars annually just in the United States on brand marketing and communications. Over the last decade, an increasing percentage of brand marketing budgets have been spent in direct marketing channels (e.g., direct mail, telemarketing, email, etc.). In fact, total brand spending on direct mail now exceeds that of broadcast television. Given direct marketing's unique capabilities, such as precise targeting, the ability to drive specific behaviors, and highly measurable results, marketers are expected to continue spending heavily in direct channels.
One of the most significant new direct marketing opportunities is the emergence of the wireless, instant messaging, interactive TV, and other messaging oriented channels. The wireless channel provides marketers the unmatched ability to reach the individual (not just the household), in a time- and event-sensitive way, with attractive and measurable marketing ROI's. In Europe, hundreds of brands are beginning to utilize the wireless channel and are committing a sizeable portion of their communications budgets over the next year to wireless.
Most of the communication programs and applications we refer to in this invention are short, two-way, user initiated communications tied to an event or action in a user's daily life.                A bank overdraft yields an alert message to a user's handset asking them to call customer service immediately.        A flight cancellation due to weather starts a dialog where the user is asked if she wants to re-book on a different flight.        A swipe of a loyalty card on entry into a supermarket generates a message with the special offers of the day.        A short-code flashed on the Jumbotron at a stadium kicks off voting on a call made by a referee.        A carrier announces the launch of new services for their subscribers through messaging.        
These message-based applications can only work if they can get to the messaging user while he is out and about and have true, measurable value if the messaging user can respond immediately to take appropriate action. They are personal, of interest to the messaging user, and entirely opt-in.
Interactive messaging, that is technology based on the interactive exchanges of messages between users and applications, is developing into a critical communication metaphor for consumers and organizations alike. Two-way text messaging, multi-media messaging (“MMS”), Instant Messaging and Flash™ based websites are all fast growing interactive messaging technologies. Indeed, on mobile devices, the limited screen real estate and input capabilities of devices make this a better interaction metaphor than the browsing metaphor prevalent on the desktop web.
Interactive messaging applications can either be free form, or directed. The goal of directed dialogs is to make it easy for messaging users to interact with the application:                Easy to initiate—by texting to a service address.        Immediate and real-time response without the messaging user having to wait for a connection or a download.        Convenient in that the messaging user is free to respond at his or her own time of choice.        Simple and clear options.        Stateful and context sensitive applications.        Easy to opt-out if the messaging user no longer wants the interaction.        
Multi-media messaging and the ability to link to WAP pages allow for the easy integration of interactive messaging dialog applications with rich content. Above all, interactive messaging applications can be implemented in scale now with the availability of two-way Short Message Service (“SMS”) on a majority of mobile phones.
In the very important cell phone and wireless carrier messaging market, the wireless carrier obviously has access to its subscriber base and can leverage their messaging capabilities to run internal communication programs, campaigns and applications. But using this channel only for the carriers' purposes is not fully leveraging this channel. This capability needs to be offered to other organizations such as brands. And most brands need to be able to reach all its customers across all wireless carriers to justify investing in interactive messaging. Hence it is critical for a messaging system, as described in this invention, to be usable by organizations that are not wireless carriers, or messaging service providers and to have the capability to route messages to and from a plurality of message service providers.
Messaging programs can be broken into three categories: push programs, pull (also known as triggered) programs and two-way push programs. Push programs are messaging programs where an initial message is pushed out to a messaging user that has supplied his messaging device address and has opted in to receive data messages. Push programs can further be classified as simple push programs, which essentially consists of a single message; and two-way push programs, which are push programs that initiate a dialog with messaging users and are designed to respond to messaging device originated messages. Pull programs are programs that are initiated by the messaging user. The messaging program existence is communicated through another channel (for example through print media, TV, radio, in-store display, on-product display) and encourages the messaging user to send an initial message to a service address. This act causes the messaging user to engage in a dialog that was designed by an organization program designer or marketer. Often these messaging programs are applications such as polls, quiz and other games or contests of interest to the messaging user.
Push and two way-push programs are also termed organization-originated programs since the messaging application initiated the communication on behalf of the organization. Pull programs are similarly termed messaging user originated since the messaging user initiated the communication.
A messaging system is needed to enable organizations to quickly develop and execute these sophisticated push, pull and two-way communication programs